A Cryptic Affair
by TheDandyCrickette
Summary: Graverobber ducks into Sanitarium Island's sewers to avoid being caught harvesting Zydrate and ends up getting caught by something... else.


**This is a preview of sorts for a crossover idea I had so enjoy and let me know what you think!**

* * *

Waves crashed against the shore, rushing up to make the bloated bodies crowding the waterline shrug before falling back again, pulling at waxen skin and rags. The flashing lights and alarms from the graveyard barely reached down here where only a few lonely headstones stood for the hundreds resting at the island's breast. A tall figure ran from the alarms and the gencops that accompanied them, a large shadow on the sand, heavy coat flared out behind him, slowing when he reached the water and turning around to make sure no one was on his tail with a gun trained on his head. He'd lost them.

Laughing to himself, Graverobber turned on his heel and started jauntily down the beach. He stopped to examine the dead and extract that brilliant cure of the people from their greedy noses, whistling as he worked. The ocean paid him no mind and soon his great coat was heavy with water and it even seeped into his boots. His makeup smeared in the water trickling down his face. That was a shame but he would fix it later.

The sound of shouting carried over the noise of the waves and he stopped whistling to listen and look around. Up the shore, a team of gencops appeared to have spotted him, the way they pointed and shouted to each other and at him. It looked like it was time to make an exit. Looking around as he pulled the needle out of a corpse, he gathered his things quickly and ran toward a large drainage pipe some fifty yards ahead. He hopped up to it, his heavy boots thumping loudly on the metal, and pressed himself to the inside of the pipe, having to crouch in the small space. He backed further into the pipe as the cops neared with their guns and flashlights and found that the grate had been torn off. How very convenient. He ducked past and ran, splashing into the dark.

It was soon clear that he wasn't being followed and he fished a vial of Zydrate from his belt to bring illumination to the cramped sewer. He still had to hunch over but the pipe had opened up enough that he was no longer crouching as he sloshed through the rank, knee-length water. He stopped for a moment, to catch his breath and put his satchel back in order after the hurried escape. His beach romp had landed him a few more vials of Z and they were all in good order, glowing at his belt.

The sewer would lead back into the city and let out eventually, it had to. But even after following it for some time, there was nowhere to return to the surface. If he turned around now, he decided, and went back to the beach he might make it out before this sewer became a tomb. The gencops would be gone by then. He began to turn around but something caught his eye.

Something tucked onto a ledge in a nearby corner, above the water. It was a woman, he discovered, the skin of her back gray and mottled with sores and rot. Definitely dead, not a breath escaped her. But she was a babe – all taut muscle under that sallow skin, even if her hips and spine did stick out excessively beneath the tight leather top she'd died in. She'd liked a good pair of boots, whoever she was, and the high heeled leather squeezed her legs up to the thigh. He appreciated that with a finger that ghosted along her leg. In life, she must've been one sexy beast.

"Now what're you doing all the way down here?" he asked and turned her over. "Oh, shit," he exclaimed and jerked backwards at the sight of her face. Beast indeed, with a mouthful of sharp, protruding teeth, no hair to speak of on her misshapen head, a face that looked like it had been melted and never quite succeeded in getting itself back in order. He noticed the impossibly long fingernails on her hands then, too. They might've been considered claws. He'd seen some fucked up corpses before but barring the most gruesome repossessions, which she didn't appear to be, this one took the maggot-infested cake.

But a corpse was a corpse and that meant Zydrate. He retrieved the extractor from his satchel and fitted it carefully with an empty vial. When he was ready, he slipped the needle up her nose and, with a well-practiced smack, drove it into her skull.

Her eyes snapped open suddenly and strong fingers grasped his throat and threw him against the wall. The shimmering, blue vial he'd been using for light slipped from his fingers and onto the concrete ledge with a clink, rolling away from him but, thankfully, away from the water as well. The extractor slipped out of his grasp and when he found himself confronted with her mismatched eyes, the syringe was still hanging where he'd lodged it.

She plucked it out with a taloned finger and offered it back. "Is this yours?"

Graverobber snatched it back from her and tried unsuccessfully to shove her away. She was stronger than she looked. "You were dead!"

"It's called sleeping," she drawled in her coarse voice and leaned toward him, inhaling deeply through her mouth like a Zaddict looking at a fresh fix.

"Lady," he growled and tried to wrench her hand away, "I know a corpse when I see one. It's my job." And not her place to say he was wrong, he was the professional here. Whether it was from surgery gone horribly wrong, or right as the case may be, or some variant of the plague, there was something seriously wrong with this woman, and that was coming from a guy who picked dead noses for a living.

She smirked and the light flickered off her huge teeth in the semi-dark and cast her warped face in long shadows. "Maybe you're not very good at your job." She took a step back from him then, standing upright with hands on her hips to size him up, and reminded him that in addition to that monstrosity she called a face she also had an impressive body. In a good way. He straightened up, forgot he was too tall for this sewer and hitting his head, and readjusted his coat. "Are you one of Rotti's men?" she demanded.

That deserved a bark of laughter. "Oh no, definitely not," he assured her, "No one's here to take back that pretty face of yours."

"Right," the not-dead woman snorted and slunk forward to corner him against the wall again, "because I paid to look like this. So what are you doing way down here, other than shoving needles into dead chicks? You don't smell like a rat."

He grabbed the strap connecting her collar to her bodice and dragged her up so they were face to face. "I could ask you the same thing, ugly duckling," he said softly, simultaneously repulsed and intrigued by whatever was going on here.

"Canary," she corrected him slyly, giving only a moment of hesitation to regaining her balance, "because I'm such a pretty bird." Graverobber laughed; at least she had a sense of humor. "I'm hiding, obviously."

"Obviously. That makes two of us."

She ran her fingers through his hair, her claws raking his scalp and neck lightly. "Hair, there's something I miss having," she said wistfully, then added, "And here I thought you were looking for something special." She laughed. "Don't look at me like that, and don't try to tell me you haven't thought about it. A fellow lover of the dead, I know it's crossed your mind. I saw you looking…"

"I would be lying," he admitted and bent forward to kiss her throat. She scoffed and shoved him off and against the wall, wrapping her arms and legs around him tightly. She unwound his scarf, dropping it on the ledge beside them, and moved his hair carefully away from his throat with her claws as he pulled the buckles on her back loose and one hand went under her leg to support her. She nuzzled his neck, her teeth scraping the skin softly, and then she gripped him tightly and sunk her teeth into his throat.

* * *

The Kine jerked at the sharp pain and tried to pry her off, couldn't. His blood flowed hot and effortless into her mouth and she savored it as she drank it up.

She had been in a fight with a few Sabbat cretins while scouting and retreated toward the ocean to recover. She'd expected to feed on sickly rats all the way out here, not hearty young men, but when she heard him splashing down the tunnel in her direction but could smell that he wasn't Kindred, she tried to hide and pretended to be the corpse she resembled. Corpses were unremarkable on Sanitarium Island, most would have kept walking without a second glance and given her the chance to sneak up behind him. Canary hadn't counted on him being a Zydrate hussler but it worked out in the end.

He tasted like paint and death but his pulse was strong and nourishing. By the time his knees began to buckle under their combined weight, she felt drunk off his blood and the amusement of seducing her prey for once. That game was usually reserved for Kindred who got to stay pretty.

She detached herself, licking the corners of her mouth clean as she sat him down on the ledge so he wouldn't fall into the water. A trickle of blood ran down his neck and she caught it on her tongue before it reached his shirt. He wouldn't remember much she recalled and wrapped his scarf back around his neck carefully.

It was tempting to leave him on his own and play a game of cat and mouse until he found his own way out. However, as she studied his face more closely she recognized him with a start: the graverobber whose wanted posters plastered the city. He served the Largos' purposes, whether he was aware of it or not. Keeping him in the sewers with her could turn Rotti's ire on the Nosferatu and tensions between the two were high enough as it was.

Disappointed, she hoisted his limp body over her shoulders and started walking.

* * *

It was cold and wet when he came to, the ground still rocking beneath him. Metal bars dug into his back. Graverobber blinked up at the light filtering through a hole in the manhole cover directly above his head. He could not remember how he got here. Everything since leaving the beach was a haze full of dark and arousing images but nothing solid.

He pulled himself to his feet, using the ladder behind him for support. Clinging to it, really. His head was pounding and he felt weak.

Not to mention he was starving. He could eat an entire dead cow that very instant.

Somehow he pulled himself up to the street and got his bearings. Not a cop in sight and he knew exactly where he was – that's what he called a skillful getaway. He stood up unsteadily and straightened his great coat, running his hands through various pockets absent-mindedly until he found something out of place.

A piece of litter had been shoved into his pocket. He uncrumpled it and found scratched in grime the words: "Corpse lover."

Startled and bleary, he looked around again to make sure nobody was around and tore the paper in two as he remembered cold hands and rotting leather. He could never live something like that down, there were already more than enough rumors to that effect. The accusation burned in the first bum-built fire Graverobber could find.


End file.
